Friday, March 03, 2017

Crusader Justine Greening...

...announces horrible plans for something called "Relationships Education" for children  with an emphasis on "boundaries and consent", An odd title, and it's important to find out what it means.  Schools, often doing heroic work trying to protect children from the worst excesses of a sex-obsessed culture and to offer a larger vision of life based on values of courtesy, kindness and the common good, are now to be nagged and bullied into pushing material  on sexual matters at the youngsters. What on earth does "consent", when discussing sexual activity, mean for a child? Already, homosexualist lobby groups have announced enthusiastically they plan to get involved with producing material...

All will suffer, but the chief victims will be children who do not have parents who can counter the propaganda or make alternative education arrangements at home. There are so many children who come from broken families and already are bruised by the lifestyle choices of the adults around them. Who will speak up for these children?   Read up about this here and make your voice heard to your MP.

From helping out with voluntary work in a prison, I have realised again and again how the current culture of Britain, with its endless promotion of "safe sex"  emphasising sexual activity as a sort of sport has destroyed lives and hopes. Teaching children that sexual activity can be between anyone and that the main thing is "consent" within "boundaries" (whatever that means) will make this much, much worse.

It is very tempting for Christians who have been fortunate in their own upbringing and have secure homes and marriages to retreat into a comfort zone and think only of their own children and grandchildren.  But we are not called to do that.

We cannot, must not, leave the vulnerable young people of Britain to the Secretary of State and the lobby groups with a sexual agenda.

And let's pray for poor Secretary Greening.

4 comments:

Tony Flavin said...

beautifully put Joanna, tempered,and and a full understanding of what we are up against

brendan said...

I watched the news the other night in a state of shocked horror. A head teacher explained how positive this was as her very young pupils lay on a floor which was covered with drawings of both male and female. The young ones had marker pens for them to fill in the genitalia. They must have been about seven or eight years old.

Anonymous said...

I can well understand why anyone would not want the state to indoctrinate children into a moral worldview which one does not share, but even taking that into account I am not sure what your objection to teaching children about boundaries or consent can be. It seems to me uncontroversial that sexual activity (in whatever context) is better consented to than not; and that social and moral boundaries, insofar as they provide a check on sexual licence, are also necessary in a civilised society. We might argue about where those boundaries might lie precisely, but it is surely odd for someone with your perspective to object to them altogether.

In an ideal world, I’m confident everyone agrees, children would develop their moral compass from loving and well informed parents. The reality – as you point out yourself – is that there are many parents who do not have the resources to provide this, or to shield their children from the worst excesses of the internet. Very many young people today have been exposed to graphic material in which both boundaries, and sometimes even consent, have been completely eroded. How can we expect those who have been desensitised in such a way to form loving and lasting relationships?

I think that the problem these days is not that children are being overly or prematurely sexualised by what they are taught in school, because what they have ready access to on their mobile phones goes far beyond that. So the alternatives are: to do nothing and leave it to parents (some of whom, as you acknowledge, will not be up to the task), or to try to provide some sort of corrective view. If children do not learn about human relationships at home or at school, then their sole source of information will be what they see (or are shown) on the internet, and what might the consequences of that be? Who, for example, would be better placed to resist an unwelcome sexual advance – someone who has had it drummed in to them that they do not have to consent to anything they don’t want to, or someone who thinks that the objectification of women which they have seen online is acceptable in the real world, or indeed is socially normal?

I know that your scepticism about this plan is based on justifiable concerns about the precise nature of the moral landscape that the state might seek to articulate to its youth, but I think it’s important to realise that the problem which the secretary of state is attempting to address is both very real and one which affects society at large. If relying on parents alone risks leaving us with a generation of sexual predators then the state has a duty to act – and teaching children about boundaries and consent might seem to be a good place to start.

Edward Reeves

brendan said...

"The Big Questions" discussed this this morning as well as "Should the Vatican end its opposition to contraception?" with its usual BBC fairness. One professor was staunchly adamant that parents shouldn't be allowed to opt out of the new sex education. The same professor then demanded that the Vatican should be forced to change its teaching on contraception. And to think these people accuse the catholic church of being tyrannical.